PARIS — Larry Gagosian opened his latest outpost this week on the edge of the private airport Le Bourget with a show by Anselm Kiefer, playing to a jet-set crowd with a space designed for large-scale art.
On Monday, blue-and-white Gagosian Gallery flags lined the street, hinting that this was probably the most excitement this area of offices, warehouses, and airport facilities had seen for awhile — though the French Air and Space museum is also just up the road. The gallery's facade almost blends in with its surroundings, aside from the fresh white paint and a large gate reprising the aforementioned Gagosian blue.
Inside, French starchitect Jean Nouvel has staged a soft intervention, accentuating the central, cube-like exhibition space with white walls on each side, adding staircases, and linking the passageways to give mezzanine views onto the space from its four corners. A total of nine exhibition spaces of different sizes could be available to artists.
"I saw a hangar that was full of old materials, it was white and gray, somewhat dirty," said Nouvel about his first on-site visit in June. "You had to discover and develop the character of the space, try to redeem the element of construction, particularly with the reinforced concrete."
The 1,650-square-meter result has a clean industrial feel, replete with exposed concrete and white walls, skylights in arched ceilings, and a mix of tinted and opaque windows allowing plenty of daylight. Sturdy old beams and a system of pulleys help move heavier works through the space, with a drawbridge at the main gate opening when needed.
Currently holding the floor at its center, the main exhibition space designed for larger works holds a petrified field of golden wheat — albeit in steel, sand, cotton, plaster, fabric, clay, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, terra-cotta, stone and lead — that Anselm Kiefer has installed for his exhibition "Morgenthau Plan," inspired by the unexecuted plan by the Roosevelt administration to dismantle Germany's industry, in effect turning the country agrarian, after World War II. Word of the plan was used as a Nazi propaganda tool.
"It's effect was completely perverse. Hitler and Goebbels told the Germans that if they didn't fight, they would all die because they would be subdued and become farmers," Kiefer explained. "I like the Morgenthau Plan because it didn't happen. I like all these ideas that don't happen."
Kiefer's field is set in a large cage, 4.8 meters high. "I wanted to give it a border, to make it a sculpture," the artist explained, adding that each straw was handmade, "like paintings, done one by one."
Three objects are spotted in the field — a terra cotta snake, a stone trough, a lead book — symbolizing fire, water, air — with the sand being earth. It also references the four Archangels and their role in Hebrew tradition, Kiefer said. To soften up the work, the artist asked Bianca Li to dance through the wheat. "I thought it needed some human traces, it made it vivid," the artist told ARTINFO France, adding that he filmed the performance. "I need to edit it but if it's good, I will show it," he promised.
Several flower paintings are also on show in smaller rooms, and these are closer to traditional oil-on-canvas than Kiefer's trademark intricate mixed-media work. Still, tensions remain. "Beauty itself is something difficult, you need a reason for a beautiful painting," mused the artist. "Beauty needs a reason. And if I connected it to the Morgenthau Plan, it would show these flowers growing all over Germany when the industry was all gone."
Kiefer has a studio near the aerodrome at Croissy-Beaubourg and had serenaded Gagosian's space with a poem by Walther von der Vogelweide when his exhibition was first announced. "It's always a space of transition, you arrive and you leave. That's important for me," he suggested.
The airport location appears to be part of a multi-pronged strategy for Gagosian, who opened his first French gallery in the Triangle d'Or in 2010. Finding a space without load-bearing columns and with generous daylight was a first concern. About 200 yards from the runway, the gallery is able to welcome discrete visitors and their private jets. But it is also set between Paris and its major airport, Charles de Gaulle. "If you look at the percentage of people who arrive from abroad for FIAC, a good number of them will be passing by here," noted Nouvel.
The general public may find it slightly more challenging to get there, at least by public transport — the nearest RER (or light rail) station is about 20 minutes walk away. Still, the gallery's ambition remains to be open. "The idea is to have three or four shows a year and I imagine that the artists will respond with large installations, even if this will not always be simple," said Serena Cattaneo, director of the Gagosian Gallery in Paris. "It will function like our gallery in rue de Ponthieu, with normal gallery hours."
"There is a strong French market and interest," she added. "Geographically in Europe, it's a place that many people come through. There are many projects now slightly offset from the center of Paris. The French are very interested and don't fear traveling to go and see something."
To see images of the new Gagosian Paris, click on the slideshow.